in my spiritual journey, i'm learning that love is all there is, that God is love, that we are loved. i have fear, but i'm growing.
it's hard to grow, but worth it. So I invite you into an exploration with me of the possibilities of what can happen when we say Yes to Love.
AND a note: i'm not on duty here, so my language and thoughts are not for the impressionable.

Monday, May 12, 2008

i want you to hit me as hard as you can

it's in there. the soul. it's watching out for us. it conspires with god - whatever mysterious beautiful strange powerful subtle thing god is being all the time - and they, along with our bodies, send us lots of messages. but the messages are weird. not like talk. not like memos. not like billboards.sometimes we're at places in our lives in which we're in a pattern that's leading us one direction, but our souls/god/bodies know that's not where we want to be. so they help us see what we're choosing - and they help us see that there is something else.this process, in my experience, is often very, very weird. and hard ... because it usually doesn't make any sense to the part of me that thinks and hears in the talk/memo/billboard model of the universe.maybe it's depression. or migraines. or a gnawing sense of something. or a fender-bender. or a series of things we keep heading towards which we don't know we're choosing - to undermine the choices we THINK we're making. (that's actually the one i think is the most interesting.)last night we were watching a gift my daughter had given my wife yesterday for mother's day: the wonderful movie Waitress on DVD. this saturday night i'm showing Fight Club at the jifc warehouse and facilitating a discussion about it afterwards. i also want to add Lars And The Real Girlto the movie night list; leslie and i saw it a few weeks ago and it is SO GREAT. amazing. and then there's The Matrixto add to this list, even though it's not on our lately-watched DVD list.these are all movies that are built around someone feeling something deeeeeeeep inside her/himself, which isn't what they think their life is about, but their head doesn't know what they truly want and hunger for, and so their soul and god help them see it. it's different for every person; that's part of the beauty.the narrator of fight club calls tyler durden into his life. and when tyler says, "i want you to hit me as hard as you can," it's as if the narrator's soul is asking tyler for the same thing. hit me. wake me up.jenna, the waitress, consults dr. pomatter. he's her healer - but she's really the one healing herself.lars's real girl arrives at his garage apartment. so what if she's not a real girl? she becomes a deeply transformative presence for everyone. (no, seriously. see it. it's lovely.)neo keeps asking himself "what is the matrix?" so long that morpheus and trinity hear him and find him.I CANNOT RECOMMEND THIS KIND OF MOVIE HIGHLY ENOUGH. i think there's something absolutely beautiful and important about affirming that The Soul Knows. in this culture of busyness and the story of stuff and consumerism and electronica and competition, The Soul Nevertheless Knows. and god's in on it with the soul. and i trust the soul - especially in the last few years of my wonderful life, in which i've seen that the soul and god know best - much better than my talk/memo/billboard head does.and, yeah, sometimes it hurts. but if my talk/memo/billboard ears just keep blocking out my soul/god messages, then the soul and god will take drastic measures within me. in which case, i'm saying to my life, "i want you to hit me as hard as you can." even though i don't know i'm saying it.

and have you read *Sleeping with Bread* by Dennis, Sheila and Matthew Linn? Your post reminds me to go get it out and read it again. It's a shortie. Look for it. It's on Amazon... http://preview.tinyurl.com/6o2e8z

Depending on your level of courageousness, on the darker side I'd have to say that Angelheart still sweeps the awards for this category, followed by a close second with Jacobs ladder. (unless I have misunderstood your category)